butterytoast replied to your post: my most depressing post ever (I hope) - TW rape, violence
while i appreciate some of this advice, living in fear constantly and blaming potential rape on my own actions sometimes seems worse than being attacked- but I have never been attacked and can barely fathom it, so I’m not totally confident about that
I agree with You completely. And my agreement is independent of my own experience of being approached with violent intent. I hope You never experience anything of the sort; I hope that for everyone. I'm not sure that anything I've escaped counts as attack -- but what's most important is that I've always succeeded in removing myself from said situation, and I'm grateful and more than a little lucky for that. Please know I'm not advocating living in fear and perceiving experiences of violence as anyone's failure to be prepared to deal with the reality of the world as it is. Far, far from it.
Re-reading, I realise I didn't articulate super-clearly that I shared this list not as a this is how things are for us ladies so let's all be prepared' message, but as an "I am incensed and terrified by the fact that all this strikes me, a queer lady, as sound advice." I just edited my initial post, too, to identify where my words end. One thing I quoted that's worth qualifying is the gendered assumption in the statement "Here's a good refresher for my lady friends." The kind of interpersonal, sexual violence these steps encourage being aware of as a terrible thing that people inflict on others disproportionately targets women. But I completely failed to check my cis-privilege earlier by not noting that many of my friends, regardless of gender identity, also navigate a world where the threat of such violence is never completely absent. Being perceived as a woman in the 'as sexual object' and/or 'as lesser human' spectrum of senses by someone who hates women isn't functionally different from being perceived as any other kind of 'lesser human deserving violence' by those people whose existence keeps me at least a little afraid most of the time -- and whose existence I don't believe should be normalized as inevitable among any group of humans.
Thanks for dialoguing!